1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer-implemented methods for analyzing the performance of an affiliate web site, or other online entity, and for identifying web site modifications that improve such performance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Online merchants commonly set up affiliate programs through which individuals and other business entities (“affiliates”) can refer customers in exchange for some form of compensation. Typically, each affiliate operates a web site that includes one or more links to a web site of the online merchant. These links are commonly tagged with an identifier of the affiliate, so that transactions originating from such tagged links can be credited to the appropriate affiliate. Thus, for example, if a user follows a link from an affiliate web site and then makes a purchase from the merchant's web site, the merchant may pay the affiliate a referral fee, such as commission.
Some affiliate programs support the ability for affiliates to list, and to provide links to the merchant's catalog pages for, specific items (products, services, etc.) that are available for purchase from the merchant. For instance, an affiliate web site associated with a particular subject area, such as cooking, may provide tagged links to the item detail pages of selected products associated with that subject area. Each such link may be displayed in conjunction with a description, which may or may not include an explicit recommendation, of the corresponding item. Thus, each affiliate may effectively operate a virtual store that lists specific items for sale, and which relies on an online merchant to process and fulfill orders for items listed in the virtual store. One example of how such a system can be implemented is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,141, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
With affiliate programs that support links to specific items, the success of a given affiliate may depend heavily on the affiliate's ability to select items that are of interest to users of its web site, and to adequately promote these items on the affiliate site. In many cases, however, affiliates do not have the resources or tools needed to ascertain the item preferences of their respective users, or to otherwise evaluate the effectiveness of their web sites. As a result, an affiliate may, for example, fail to list items that are of particular interest to its users, or may fail to display such items in a sufficiently prominent location on the affiliate web site.